When was the Dust Bowl?

In the 1920s farmers ploughed up millions of acres of native grassland that had held the soil in place. When severe drought struck in the early 1930s, crops failed and strong winds lifted the dry topsoil into huge 'black blizzards'. The worst, on 14 April 1935, is remembered as Black Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of people left the region, many heading to California, a migration depicted in John Steinbeck's novel 'The Grapes of Wrath'. The disaster led to the creation of the Soil Conservation Service in 1935 and new farming practices.